Haryana govt to bring down incidence of blindness

Chandigarh, Apr 1 (UNI) The Haryana Government has envisaged various plans for bringing down the incidence of blindness from 1.13 per cent to 0.5 per cent by 2010.

Informing this here today, a spokesman of the Health Department said the National Programme for Control of Blindness, a 100 per cent centrally sponsored scheme was being looked after by the State Blindness Control Society at the state level and by District Blindness Control Societies at the district level.

He further informed that there were about 51 operating facilities and 128 private eye surgeons in the state.

The cataract performance for period ended on February 2006 was 77 per cent, he said.

The national rate of blindness incidence is 1.49 per cent.

To bring down the incidence of blindness, ten vision centres had been identified for carrying out the refraction. These centres were at Ambala, Karnal, Bhiwani, Panchkula, Rewari, Sirsa, Jind, Sonepat, Fatehabad and Rohtak. The funds for the purchase of equipments had already been released to the districts.

The revalence of refractive error cases in children was around five to seven per cent. Training to teachers and link workers, health workers was provided at the district level for the screening of school children and free spectacles were given to the poor children.

The spokesman informed that 1412 teachers were imparted training during 2005-06. He said 7,98,572 number of school going children were screened during the concerned time period out of which 21,649 children were found with refractive errors. During the same period, 1683 number of children were provided with free glasses.

The spokesman expressed that Appropriate Authority and the Authorisation Committee had been constituted and necessary guidelines for registration of eye banks and eye donation centres had been issued to all civil surgeons. After the issuing of necessary guidelines, five eye banks had submitted their applications for registration which were being processed for registrations. Presently, there was only one eye bank functioning in Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (PGIMS), Rohtak.

He said as per the quarterly achievement of the PGIMS eye bank for 2005-06, 28 eyes had been collected upto December last year out of which 25 had been utilised for Keratoplasty.

He stated that three-day orientation training was imparted to Primary Health Centre and Community Health Centre Medical Officers at State Headquarters for effective implementation of the National programme to control blidness.

One day training was provided to Multipurpose Health Workers (Male and Female), Aanganwari workers by the District Blindness Control Society for screening the 50 plus population and to register the blind persons in blind register for cataract operation. A one day training was given to the teacher by the society for the screening to the school children.

He added that Union Government had recently upgraded the Ophthalmology department of PGIMS to Regional Institute of Ophthalmology. The requirement of purchase of equipments had already been submitted to the Union Government for the early release of funds.

A grant-in-aid of Rs 2.82 crore was required from the central government under National Programme for Control of Blindness during the year 2006-07.

UNI